Week 4: April 20th, 2016

This week, we divided and conquered. Half of our team spent the majority working on the arduino. For those of you that don't know, an arduino is a circuit board that comes in handy when building digital devices or interactive objects. This includes coding and correct wiring from the board to the motor. We were experimenting with the program which took the majority of class.

Figure 5: The Arduino Board

We were having trouble completing the circuit with the right outputs that are needed for our device. We are struggling with creating enough power to enable the function of the motor that we need. We used the internet to see if we could find a solution to this problem. We believe the issue is the way we are wiring the Arduino to the motor. We found that a small DC motor may require more current than the Arduino can supply. To fix this, a transistor is needed. We will order this transistor for next week's class and test it then.

Figure 4: Bryce Working on the Arduino

The other half of the team worked on the creation of the lab manual. We looked at the different examples of college level lab manuals that are available on the course website to start the outline. We created a basic outline of the manual and will work next week to creating a working rough draft.